Documents & Reports

Agriculture, water resources and food security (English)

Abstract

The major issues with Iraq's agriculture today are its low productivity and growth rate and its inability to provide a dependable means of food and income for its population. They are partly attributable to the myopic policy regime of the past where the... See More +The major issues with Iraq's agriculture today are its low productivity and growth rate and its inability to provide a dependable means of food and income for its population. They are partly attributable to the myopic policy regime of the past where the government suppressed the sector's potential to grow in the interest of maintaining low food prices through such harmful intervention as production control, price control and marketing restrictions all within the context of a universal consumer subsidy system. Another contributing factor to the illness of the sector was the high dose of input subsidies given out by the government, which sapped the sector of its competitive ability. While subsidizing the sector with cheap inputs, the state also went about destroying the market for outputs and agricultural credit and investment, which kept the private sector at bay.
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